Food Hygiene data - Supporting notes

\*FTEs - Important note

In submitting this data local authorities are advised that the numbers of FTE posts provided should reflect the actual proportion of time spent by professional and administrative staff on food hygiene and/or food standard issues. There is, however, no prescriptive guidance given on exactly how that time should be determined and the FSA recognises that figures supplied will often be ‘educated estimates’.

The FSA is aware that local authorities calculate the proportion of time using a variety of different methods which means that the validity of making direct local authority to local authority comparisons is limited and any conclusions drawn from doing so must be treated with caution. It is for this reason, that the FSA uses the data only in a generic way to compare year on year figures to look at overall trends in the number of FTEs in local authority food law enforcement services across the UK or in individual countries.

In light of the above, if you intend to use the FTE data for comparison of individual local authorities, we would advise strongly that you contact each authority directly to discuss how their estimates were derived. This will also provide an opportunity to ensure that the data you have is up-to-date.

† LAEMS return were not completed by local authority by 3rd June 2019 (10am) when reports for data signed off on LAEMS were run.

NP - No premises given at this risk rating NR - No interventions due or reported

(1) Written warnings were estimated due to database issue (2) Food hygiene and food standards data are reported together. Potential error in interventions data due to internal database issues (3) Food hygiene and food standards full time equivalent posts are reported together (4) Only deals with food standards (5) These local authorities merged on 1 April 2019 and are now known as BCP Council but each LA reported separately for 2018/19 (6) These local authorities (together with Dorset CC) formed the new Dorset Council on 1st April 2019 but each LA reported separately for 2018/19 (7) Suffolk Coastal District Council and Waveney District Council merged and are known as East Suffolk District Council from 1st April 2019 (8) Internal reports suggest error in due interventions outstanding (9) Full time equivalent posts cover food standards and hygiene work (10) Interventions reported may be low due to database issue (11) Food hygiene and food standards written warning data may be reported together (12) Error in interventions data and written warnings reported may be low due to database error